Twitter Quantifies Impact Of Live-Tweeting On TV Engagement

Everyone in the TV business knows the story of how the enthusiastic embrace of
Twitter by Shonda Rhimes and Kerry Washington helped "Scandal" go from living on the cancellation bubble to being a ratings hit. And everyone in the TV business wants their shows to be ratings hits. So why isn't everyone in the TV business tweeting more?

Twitter thinks it's because they don't have enough proof yet that it's a good use of their time, "Scandal" notwithstanding. "It's so intuitive, it makes so much sense, but there's still a need to make sure we can quantify it and figure out how impactful it is," says Anjali Midha, the company's head of global media and agency research.

Its newest research effort is to analyze the effect "Scandal"-style live-tweeting has on on-platform engagement. It turns out the effect is strong -- provided it's the shows' stars who are doing the tweeting. Programs whose cast members live-tweet when the show is airing generate 64% more discussion (ie. tweets about the show) than programs whose cast members abstain. When it's the show's official account doing the live-tweeting, there's still a lift, but it's only 7%.

It's a similar story when you look at new following activity. Shows typically see an increase in the rate of follower acquisition during their broadcast windows, but when the cast is live-tweeting, the rate of increase jumps by 228%. When the live tweets are coming from the official account, the differential is only 15%, though it varies somewhat by genre.

Why don't more showrunners and network heads require their shows' talent to tweet during broadcasts, when the evidence keeps mounting that it can have a real impact on ratings and overall engagement? "It takes a little bit of strategy," says Midha. "It's like a marketing channel. You need to put a little effort behind it." Twitter will keep working to convince them it's worth the effort.

Meanwhile, Facebook is changing its News Feed algorithm to surface updates in a more timely fashion -- a move that seems calculated to make it more competitive with Twitter as a platform for real-time conversations, like those about in-progress TV shows.

I've been covering the business of news, information and entertainment in one form or another for more than 10 years. In February 2014, I moved to San Francisco to cover the tech beat. My primary focus is social media and digital media, but I'm interested in other aspects, ...